ABSTRACT
The words prevention, health promotion, and holistic health (e.g., Ardell, 1979; Hastings, Fadiman, & Gordon, 1980; LaLonde, 1975; Pelletier, 1979) raise hopes for a longer, healthier life and present an attractive arena for applied social psychological research. Have we at last found the magical world where social science can do well by doing good? In our judgment, research in prevention will be of mutual benefit to social psychology and to public health. The applied setting provides a forum for generating substantive theory and specifying contextual factors that moderate relationships among theoretical variables (Deitz, 1978; Garner, 1972; Leventhal, 1980). This is a recent development, as social psychology has traditionally relied on laboratory research to generate theory. In our view, laboratory studies are most appropriate for testing and rejecting single hypotheses. Although field studies can also be designed to test and reject single hypotheses ( Ellsworth, 1977), this use appears inefficient when compared with their value in generating comprehensive models of behavior.
